Part VIII
Von stood easily on the beaten, rutted path, staring off at the western horizon, and trying to judge the distance to the mountain peaks fringing it. Merryl kneeled at his side, working on tying another bandage in place with a long strip of cloth. The sun was high overhead on the third day since they had left the village of Dewpointe, and she had to squint and tuck her head to the side to be able to see what she was doing. Nonetheless, she took the effort to cast him a disgusted sideways glance as he made absent-minded attempts to load his pipe between pointing its stem at various landmarks. When some ash flew in her face after being dislodged by one particularly strong wave of it, her look became an open scowl.
“Must you fool around with that disgusting pipe?” she chided. Von didn’t answer, muttering only some nonsense about squared numbers and hypotenuses. She sniffed at the rebuke, and gave the cloth a much harder tug than was necessary, tightening the knot she tied in it painfully into his side. When the sting caused Von to break from his trance with a jerk of his body and a muffled yelp, she smiled satisfactorily to herself.
He walked over to a fallen tree lying on the side of the road and sat down while he finished loading his pipe and lit it. “We’ve covered a lot of ground,” he said at last. “I’m kind of impressed. I didn’t think you would do so well out here.”
Merryl wanted to be furious at him for his underestimation of her. She wanted to be. Yet she couldn’t help but redden a bit at the man’s clumsy attempt at a compliment. She realized what she was doing, and quickly turned away, pretending to organize the contents in her satchel.
If Von noticed, he didn’t show any indication of it. In fact, he was already busy staring off into the distance again. “There’s a village a few hours from here, Merryl. We might get to enjoy hot meals and warm beds tonight.”
***
Many hours later, as the sun began to sink behind the mountains, Von’s promise proved true as they walked into a modest village. He again suggested they seek a warm meal and stay the night, taking in what comforts they could after spending three days on the road. The town’s inn wasn’t difficult to identify, being the only building in town of more than one story. It was three in fact, located some yards from the road through town, and led to by a well-kept cobblestone path. The way it was it was cared for implied it must do a lot better business than its small town location would lead one to believe.
In moments, they were settled around a table by a fireplace that burned just high enough to take the chill of the early spring evening out of the air. They ordered plates of roast mutton and chewed them slowly, savoring each bite. Von sipped at a large mug of ale between swallows, being strangely quiet, even for him. Merryl passed several minutes with her meal, wine, and thoughts of enjoying a hot bath, but soon grew impatient with the lack of conversation.
“You never mentioned why you’re doing this.” She began. “Why are we going to Blueshaven?”
Von set his mug down and sighed softly in resignation as he looked up at her.
***
Herm awoke with a start to a nagging feeling in a remote corner of his brain. The sun was an hour or two past set, and all seemed quiet in the night. A moment passed before a second peculiar twinge in his consciousness clued him in to exactly what was happening. He rose quickly out of his chair, and strode toward the trap door in the opposite corner of the room that would take him to the cellar underneath his cabin. The cellar and escape. He had only made it halfway when he heard a sharp crack, and the front door flew open behind him, sending splintered wooden shards flying in all directions. He whirled to see three huge men dressed in grey traveling clothes with blue hoods and cloaks standing in the doorway. He was certain he knew who they were and could guess well enough why they had come. And somewhere, there would be more.
Groping at a bookshelf behind him, Herm closed his hand around a small crystal figurine of a dragon. It was a beautifully sculptured piece, with fine detailing and small ruby eyes. Hating himself for it, he held the sculpture by its head, and smashed it on the hardwood shelf of the bookcase, shattering it into pieces. As the men began to advance, he plucked a coin-sized shard from the pile and flicked his wrist, sending it spinning at the nearest man.
The brute gave just a half-step pause while we pondered this, but then continued his stride, while raising a gloved hand to knock the projectile aside. Suddenly though, it changed course, swinging out wide as if to circle around him instead of fly into him. The old wizard spoke a single guttural syllable then, and in a bright flash of light, the shard exploded, becoming hundreds of such shards, each identical in size and shape to the original. The shards swirled and swarmed around the man, tightening ever closer and whirling in all directions like a vortex of tiny piranha teeth. Very soon, the first ones started nicking flesh, stinging painfully, and a second beyond that, they cut deeper. Small squares of clothing and cubes of flesh began dropping from his body, and he screamed in pain as the shards closed ever inward. Within breaths, the screaming stopped, cut abruptly off by several shards that closed in enough to slice deeply through the dying man’s throat. As his body slumped to the floor, the shards did as well, continuing their work. Long after their victim stopped feeling, they would eventually converge back into one shard, in the center of what would soon be a large bloody mess.
The other two men weren’t about to wait for this to happen, and began moving nearer once more, one on either side of the old man. Neither drew their weapons for some strange reason, but Herm knew that didn’t make them much less of a threat. He watched in horror as one of them backhanded a lantern, knocking it off its hook, and sending it crashing onto the floor. Oil oozed slowly from it for a second or two before erupting in a flame that got to work consuming the floor underneath it.
The other man was close enough to get a hand on the wizard by now, and Herm spun to face him, kicking him square in the shin as he did so. The huge man only smiled, and squeezed the wizard’s shoulder where he had his grip. Waves of pain deluged through his body, but Herm managed to concentrate enough to prepare a simple spell in his mind. Raising his free hand to the man’s face at the same time the man was preparing to strike him, Herm release the spell, sending a jolting electric shock through the man’s brain. He looked stunned as he released his grip, as if he was trying to decide whether or not it had any effect on him. The choice was made on his behalf soon enough however, and he collapsed to the ground.
Unfortunately, the remaining man was also undeterred by the death of this comrade as well. He was perhaps a bit more cautious though, and didn’t advance on the wizard right away. Giving a wizard time to think is often the most fatal mistake one can make though, and this instance would prove no different. Making a quick circular motion with a couple of his fingers, Herm watched as several long tendrils of flame emerged from the fire which now covered most of the far side of the room. They caught up with the final intruder quickly, and wrapped around him, preventing escape, and igniting his clothes. Slowly, they dragged the man back toward their source. He screamed in pain as the acrid odor of burning flesh filled the room. Eventually, those screams died as well, leaving only the loud crackle of the flames to be heard.
Herm knew he had no time to waste. Running back to his chair, he snatched up a couple of the books he had been reading and tucked them under an arm as he crossed back toward the trap door. He descended the ladder into a small dark room, and took several deep breaths now that he was away from the smoky room above. Before long, a loud explosion from said room set him into motion again. He cursed as he thought about which valuable spell component that was likely to have been, and reached for a rotting bookcase on an adjacent wall, shoving it aside. Behind it, a long tunnel awaited him. He paused for only a fraction of a second before hurrying down it into complete darkness.
After feeling his way through the tunnel for some time, he stopped to catch his breath at the other end. Another ladder here would take him to the surface, to a place well hidden in the mountains not far from his home. He tucked the two small leather bound books he carried into the sash of his robe, and reached for the ladder. It was then he felt a sharp pain accompanied by a loud crack on the back of his head, and the world faded away.