Chapter 22

The inn's stillness and quiet was unnerving, the blackness of the halls and common room below an ominous contrast to the noise and bustle and light that should have been coming from downstairs this early into the night, just a few bare hours after sundown. Even with the flickering light of the candles at their bedside, the dark outside their room was so complete it left even her sharp eyes momentarily unable to pierce the gloom.

The smell told her the danger first. Silmaria took a deep breath, and her nose wrinkled at the thick coppery scent that could only be freshly spilled blood.

"Get back," Rael said in a quiet hiss, and his hand went for the hilt of his greatsword.

Hardly a moment after he spoke the words, before Silmaria fully registered the unsettling strangeness they found themselves in, a black blur shot past her from behind. Moving with all the silent grace of a whispered death, a man wrapped all in black leapt, his footfalls as utterly silent as her own. He pounced onto Rael's back with his blade leading the way. Silmaria let out a startled gasp as the blade sank into her love's back.

Rael let out a roar, half pain and half rage, caution forgotten in the surprise of the attack. He bucked, thrashing, his huge body wrenching back and forth as he reached fruitlessly for his sneaky attacker. The black-clad man clung to Rael, his legs half wrapped around the larger man's waist as he held tightly to the short blade he'd shoved into the Knight's back.

It took only a moment for Silmaria to react, but she was cursing herself for that moment even as she lunged forward, one hand yanking her dagger from its sheath at her waist, the other baring her claws. Before she'd even taken the scant strides across the room to reach where Rael stood at the door, a second man had come rushing from the darkness of the hall, leading with his blade. Rael's own dagger came whipping out and he parried the stroke of his attacker's sword. The big Knight pushed forward, driving his dagger against the sword until the cross guards locked, and then using his weight to bear down on the man, forcing the smaller, dark figure back even as he carried his first attacker with him on his back.

Remembering some of the lessons and guidance that Rael had been teaching her, the Gnari girl lunged forward, hooking her claws into the shoulder of the assassin clinging to Rael's back. She brought her dagger up and drove it brutally into the shadowy man's back, right where his kidney would be, and again, and again, her blade tap tap tapping in and out of the man's flesh. The man's body convulsed, rocked, and releasing his hold on Rael, he dropped to his feet.

Silmaria expected the man to go down with a cry of pain, but no sound left him aside from a soft grunting of air being expelled from his lungs. Worse still, the man didn't crumple in the agony of shock and a looming death. Instead he tried to whirl to face her. Silmaria's claws being sunk so deeply into the man's back saved her, and she was yanked along behind him. Silmaria shifted her body quickly to slip around under his arm as he tried to whip it out to strike her. She stabbed upward again, up under his ribs this time, sure she had punctured a lung or worse.

Still, the man did not go down and did not scream. Not slowing to wonder, Silmaria skipped behind him, using her claws and her dagger in the man's side to steer her body behind him as he whirled and jerked and tried to get ahold of her.

Rael drove the man before him out the open door to their room and into the hallway. He slammed him into the wall, his dagger pressuring the man's curved short sword back until it was wedged against the man's chest. Rael brought his knee up savagely between the man's legs hard enough to lift his attacker bodily off the floor, but the man simply let out a light wheeze and fought on. The assassin freed his blade and brought it up in a quick, tight slash at Rael's neck but the Nobleman ducked and brought his arm up to push the hooded man's sword arm up over his head, pinning it to the wall behind him. Rael brought his dagger in and plunged the blade several times into the smaller man's gut.

The hooded man reacted with no more surprise or pain than before. Instead, he braced his back to the wall, brought his legs in tight into the small space between them, and pushed hard. Rael went rocking back a few steps and nearly topped back into the room, then regained his footing just in time to dart to the side as the man came at him with the deadly curved blade once again. The Knight's found himself cornered in the dead end of the hall just beyond their room. Thinking quickly, he grabbed at the large painting, likely a piece done by one of the more artistic Tower Brothers, and ripped it from the wall, smashing it into the shadowy man. It did no damage, of course, but the man reacted nonetheless, raising his blade to cut through the painting.

The small miscalculation was enough. Rael brought his dagger up under the man's exposed armpit and drove it in, striking the cluster of nerves and slicing through muscle and sinew. The man brought his blade forward in a stabbing motion aimed at the Knight's heart. Rael sidestepped, ducking, to slip past the man, wrenching his dagger free as he spun and grasped the killer's cloak. Rael gave a mighty yank, the muscles in his arm bulging as he jerked the man clean off his feet with the force of his sudden pull. A loud crack echoed through the quiet inn as the assassin's skull smacked into the scuffed wooden flooring, and the man landed in a heap. Rael slammed his booted heel down onto the man's sword arm, pinning it to the floor, and brought his own dagger down to slash across the cloaked man's throat. Blood welled up in a wet, coppery rush. Unsure at that point if the man would, could even die, Rael slashed his throat open again, and again. His dagger wobbled and swayed as it thudded against the man's spine, and only then was he finally convinced the man was well and truly dead.

Rael had no time to savor the victory. "Silmaria," he gasped. The Knight quickly snatched up the dead man's short sword and dashed into the room.

Silmaria couldn't believe that the man she fought could possibly refuse so adamantly to just lay down and die! She stabbed him, again and again, and nothing seemed to stop him. She knew from her talks with Rael that some men were so heavily coursing with adrenaline during a battle that they would not go down to a simple stab wound, but this was ridiculous! The Gnari used her fear to keep moving, always shifting to stay ahead of the man and continue to work her dagger into his flesh.

She couldn't keep it up forever, of course, and eventually the man wrenched free of her, spinning too hard for her to keep up with and tossing her aside. Silmaria skipped back, trying to put as much space between them as possible. But she overestimated the space in the room and smashed into the table arranged under the window, very nearly going pitching out of it. She stared, fearful and disbelieving at the man. Blood poured out his wounded side from the slashes in his dark garb where bloody flesh showed, stark crimson against snow white skin.

Silmaria glanced up at his face, what little she could see under the shadows of cloak and cowl. His eyes were all she noticed, the same vivid red as the bright blood spilling from him all over the ground.

The man came lunging at her. Silmaria kicked one of the chairs by the table under the window at him. He leapt around it, but it delayed him just long enough for Silmaria to leap to the left and up onto the bed. The man spun, grabbing for her legs. Silmaria sprang agilely up, and kicked out, her heel smashing the man in the face. It did nothing to hurt him, but the force made him tumble back, his hood falling away from a face that would have been completely ordinary except for the multitude of intricate, intertwining runes burned into his flesh around the eyes and brow.

Before the man's back even thunked into the wall Silmaria was in the air, leaping in a desperately reckless, instinctual attack. She stared into the man's eyes, redder than the sun, redder than the clay of The Reach, redder than a bloody death and as empty. The man's eyes were hollow pools of nothing. Dead eyes.

And then they were dead eyes truly as Silmaria's dagger plunged with all the force of her body propelling through the air into the man's right eye. She felt the blade scrape and grind against the man's eye socked, catching in the bone, but it didn't matter, her force was too great, and the blade plunged in true, killing the man.

Silmaria didn't think about the blood spurting hot and sticky onto her hand. She tried to tug her dagger free once, twice, and then gave it up.

"Silmaria!" Rael called, panic making him forget all notion of secrecy or stealth.

Silmaria turned and rushed to him. He caught her in his arms, crushing her in his embrace. "Thank all gods everywhere, I thought I'd lost you," he murmured into her ear, relieved, and he was shaking as much as she was.

Silmaria clung to him, and then her eyes widened with remembered panic. She pulled back and stared wide-eyed up at him. "Me? What about you! Your back, Master! The blade!"

Rael winced, then, as if just in that moment remembering the short sword still stuck in his back. He glanced around for a moment, then, moving swiftly, he grabbed one of the chairs and moved to the door, shutting it firmly and wedging the chair under the doorknob, hard, to keep it pinned shut.

"The window," he nodded. Silmaria moved to quickly shut the window, shuttering it.

Rael gave a soft grunt and sat in the remaining chair. He nodded to her brusquely. "There are bound to be more of them waiting to take us. We have to move quickly. Get it out."

"But..."

"Now, Sil. We don't have time!"

Silmaria bit her lip and nodded. She took the blanket from the bed and cut it into strips before moving behind him.

"It's..." Silmaria began, her brow furrowing.

"Stuck. I know," Rael nodded. "It caught on my pack. Probably what saved my life. What did get through caught my shoulder blade. Kept it from hitting anything vital. But I think the tip is in the bone. Get it out, Sil, quickly."

Silmaria swallowed and nodded. She couldn't do much to get his pack off with the blade stuck in it, so she pulled it away from his back as well as she could and stuffed the wad of cloth between the pack and his shoulder, wrapping it around the blade as well as she could.

"Ready?"

Rael grabbed one of the pillows, bit down on it hard, and nodded.

Silmaria yanked the blade free. Rael's body went rigid with pain and he let out a hard edged roar, muffled into the pillow. Silmaria applied firm pressure to the wound, holding the wadded clothe in place while Rael took several shaky, deep breaths. He swallowed, and then gave another nod. While Silmaria held firm pressure on the wound in his shoulder blade, Rael used his dagger to cut the sheets into a few more long strips, which Silmaria used to tie the wadded cloth into place on his back, a shoddy solution to the wound, but the best they could manage just then.

"Master, those men ... who the hell are they? What are they? The man I fought ... he wouldn't stop!"

"I know," Rael nodded as he moved his right arm slowly to test how well it would work with the wound. "The same with the man I fought. It was like he felt no pain. He wouldn't stop, wouldn't tire, not until he was fully dead. It wasn't ... natural."

"It was like the men at the manor, but worse. So much worse..." Silmaria choked softly.

Rael turned and gripped her shoulders in his strong hands, giving her a rough shake. "Focus, Sil. We can fall apart later. Right now we have to get out of here. Do you hear me? This is not the work of two men, not even two such as these. There's more danger here, and we'd better be gone or whoever else is here will finish the job!"

Silmaria swallowed softly, stared into her beloved's eyes, and hardened her resolve. She nodded, setting her chin firmly. "Yes, sir."

Rael moved to scoop the dropped blade from the floor. He'd expected the tip to be bent where it had stuck in his shoulder blade, but the short sword was made of good, sturdy steel, and the point was fine and deadly still. He handed it to Silmaria and nodded.

The Knight glanced down at the man Silmaria killed, and he couldn't help but note the runes burned into the man's face. He knelt to take a closer look, running his thumb slowly over the burned, scarred runes.

"Like the men at the manor," he muttered softly. "But more of them. More intricate and complex. What the hell do these runes mean?"

"I don't think he's going to tell us anything," Silmaria said tensely. "We can speculate all we like when we're out of here!"

"Right," Rael nodded, rising to his feet. "Check outside. Your eyes are better than mine. Can you see anything out there?"

Silmaria and Rael both went to the window, standing tense and at the ready, and Rael pushed the shutters open wide. With no threat presenting itself, Silmaria peeked outside, her eyes scanning the land outside and the yard below their window.

"I don't see anyone," Silmaria whispered. "There are some horses over in the stable that I didn't notice earlier today. But I don't see any sign of anyone outside."

"Could still be out there," Rael said grimly. "And they're almost certainly downstairs in the inn."

Almost on cure, the doorknob quavered, clacking, and then there was the meaty thudding of someone putting their shoulder into the door. The chair shimmied and flexed, but held for the time being.

"The window it is, then," Rael sighed.

"I'll go first," Rael said, or started to at least, but Silmaria was already slinking lithely out the window before the words were fully formed. Rael cursed and lunged for the window. He stuck his head out, his heart pounding in his ears as loudly as the pounding on the door, expecting to see Silmaria on the ground below.

"Here!" she hissed, crouched low on the balls of her feet on the slanting roof to the left of the window.

A crack snapped through the air like the lashing of a whip behind him. The chair would give at any moment. He had to buy them time, even just a few moments.

Quickly, Rael grabbed the bed and yanked it over in front of the window. He stabbed down into the straw mattress with his dagger, ripping it open and exposing the matted straw within, then grabbed the candle from the bedside table. He thrust the candle down into the bed. The dry straw caught quickly and the fire spread through the mattress, catching at the linens. As Rael went scrambling out the window the fire was spreading quick and hot, racing over every inch of the bed, spreading along the backboard, licking down the sturdy wooden support legs, and flickering up the wall behind the bed, quickly catching at the cheap wool draperies hanging by the window with voracious appetite.

Silmaria helped Rael pull himself up onto the roof. "Is that a fire?"

"That's a fire," Rael confirmed. "It'll buy us some time. It also means we better get the hell off this roof."

Silmaria looked around quickly. Already the acrid smell of smoke stung her sensitive nose, and the flickering orange brilliance of the flames inside the room below went streaming from the open window out into the blackness of the night. Memories of the Manor flashed through her mind, startling and fearful and unwanted. Silmaria pushed them aside, and a few moments later pointed off to the left.

"There's a pretty big eave over there over a door leading out of the first floor. There's a clearing and the stable yard is nearby. We should be able to drop down there."

Rael gave a curt nod, and the pair went scurrying across the roof, Silmaria sure footed and quiet, Rael less so, his heavier weighted footsteps sending clay shingles sliding off the edge of the roof. The eave overhanging the door below was large enough for them to stand upon. Silmaria hopped quickly down onto the eave and then to the ground without a problem. Rael slipped down as lightly as he could, but his booted foot went smashing through the roof of the eave with the distinct shattering of clay shingles and broken wood. Rael grimaced, dreading the attention the loud noise echoing into the night might bring. He hoped fervently whoever might be lurking downstairs in the inn had run upstairs to investigate the fighting and the fire.

The copper haired warrior yanked his foot free and leapt into the yard below, half expecting the door behind them to burst open at any moment. Instead, men soon came striding from the shadows outside, encircling them in the inn yard. Some crept from the stables a few yards away to their left, some from the darkness of the open land surrounding the inn, and even from the courtyard behind the inn and the buildings beyond

"Up! Up, now!" Rael growled, grabbing Silmaria and steering her toward the eave at their backs. Silmaria grit her teeth, swallowed the multitude of protests rising to her lips, and put her foot into the step Rael made with his cupped hands. He boosted her up easily and Silmaria scrambled onto the eave once more.

Knowing Silmaria was out of reach made the vice grip of fear clutching Rael's chest ease somewhat. His shoulder throbbed where the dagger had bit into him, and he was acutely aware of how precarious their situation was.

More than anything, though, he was angry. Angry at the neat little trap they'd fallen into. Angry with himself for falling into it. Angry that even here, now, this far away from their homeland, the assassins doggedly pursued him with a seemingly endless reach.

He stared out at the gathered men, who slowly shuffled closer, closer. Quiet feet barely scuffling in the night and the smoke and the dirt. It was hard to distinguish them in the shadows of the night, but the fire in the inn was spreading and catching quickly and the overcasting of clouds above was clearing away, letting enough moonlight for him to make out detail here and there.

Enough to show him the dozen and more men arrayed against him. Several wore the dark cloaks and hoods and inky garb matching the clothing of the dead assassins up in the now burning inn.

And enough for him to see that the rest of the men wore the distinct ceremonial gray robes and navy blue mantels of the Brotherhood of the Tower, complete with the speckling of small crystals set in the mantle to represent stars in the blue firmament of a night sky. They came, side by side with the assassins in their midst, and they grasped the same curving short swords the black-garbed killers held.

Rael thrust his pilfered short sword into his belt and withdrew his greatsword, finally having the room to wield it freely. He tested its weight in his hands and rolled his shoulders, testing the wound at his shoulder blade. He grit his teeth at the tug of pain; it would hold well enough. It must.

Rael bent his anger and fury into will and determination. His hands gripped at the leathered hilt of his greatsword, drawing reassurance from its weight and balance. He tasted the night air, the red dust of stirred earth, the smokiness of the fire quickly consuming the inn. The tang of death done and death to come.

The whispering twang of the bowstring came moments before the fierce, cruel thud of an arrow buried mortally deep into the meat of a man's chest cavity, and one of his adversaries went down.

"There! The girl!" Barked a voice, and another man was already down by then as Silmaria notched her second arrow.

Rael recognized Ricard's voice immediately, though he couldn't pick the man out of the crowd just then. The Brother's voice and tone was entirely different now, strangely so, twisted by anger and hysteria, high and cracking and quavering. He sounded like a broken thing, a man gleefully walking on the precipice of something dark and cavernous and unknowable, and delighting as the razors edge cut his feet to fleshy ribbons.

Ricard. Bloody fucking Ricard, with his constant delays and avowals of aid.

The betrayal laid bare, Rael's rage was fed, and intensified to a roaring blaze.

The men came, intent on reaching him or Silmaria, Rael neither knew nor cared. The Knight burst forward in an explosion of muscle and violence and his greatsword arced out, cleaving through the night with its tremendous reach and fierce power. The first Brother met his end, his arm half severed and his chest opened. Another step forward and a quick whirl of the huge blade brought Rael's sword around in an upward cut, reaching under the man's guard. A second body slumped to the ground, the dead man nearly cut in half. His third attacker came rushing out of the night to his left and Rael lunged back, his blade coming up to block and parry his attacker's assault, but the man never reached him, going down with an arrow through his belly.

Then the fighting grew too thick and frantic for Rael to keep track of, the men rushing him two and even three at a time. He spun and lunged, slashing and whipping his blade about wildly, keeping the assassins away with the reach of his sword and the potency of his rage. He fought like a man possessed, prodded to anger too great to be contained. His movements remained quick and agile, his blade moving faster than any lesser man could have managed, and one by one he cut the Brothers and the shadowy assassins with their flesh-burnt runes with the force of his skill and his rage, until his blade shone bloody red in the firelight.

The assassins proved as resilient and unyielding as their brothers in the inn had been. The first Rael caught across the middle with the tip of his greatsword, slashing the man's belly half open, but the killer did not succumb until Rael ran him fully through and his blade stuck many inches through his back. Silmaria's arrow caught another assassin in the chest and, after a momentary stumble from absorbing the force of the shot, the man came relentlessly on even as he bled out. Rael parried the man's persistent strikes before skipping back and bringing his greatsword in for a low arcing slash, severing the assassin's right leg just below the knee. The shadowy man still did not go still until Rael finally brought his sword down across the prone man's neck, severing his head before rolling out of the way as his next attacker waded in.

Silmaria soon had to abandon her perch on the eave. The fire spread rapidly through the inn, the flames consuming and twisting through timber and cloth in an ever widening path of crackling, feeding destruction. She fired off another arrow into the back of a Brother trying to circle in behind Rael, bringing the man down. He tried to reach back to grab at the arrow, screaming in agony, flecks of bloody pink froth dropping from purple lips stretched in a grimace of mortal agony. He was not like the others. Not like the assassins. He was like all the Brothers; he was very much a man, and he felt every agonizing moment of his death pains.

And he was trying to kill them.

Silmaria hardened her heart, and turned away.

With a creek and a crash the door behind her burst open. From the inn itself came streaming and screaming several brothers, their robes and mantels ablaze, their hair and faces wreathed in flames and quickly melting like the wax of the candle that started this whole fiery mess to begin with. Silmaria backpedaled as one of the men came right at her, screaming like he was in the hells already. He probably wasn't really after her; more than like he was crazed out of his mind with the pain of burning alive, and she just happened to be in his path. Either way, he was running for her, bearing down on her, a big mass of seething fire and the flames on him as greedy as any fire she'd ever seen, seeking wood and clothe and flesh and bone and anything in all of existence to fuel its fiery glory.

Silmaria put an arrow in the man's chest, cutting short his suffering and forward momentum all at once.

This is too much, Silmaria thought grimly as she looked around the clearing where Rael still raged and fought and killed. So many. How many can there be? The entire sect of Brothers? And how many of the cloaked ones that refuse to die? This is bad!